Tarzia FOI hearing resumes

Martin B. Cassidy

Published 11:38 pm, Friday, June 28, 2013

HARTFORD -- At a Friday hearing before the state Freedom of Information Commission challenging the legality of Stamford's legislative leadership meeting in private to discuss city business, two current Board of Representatives leaders repeatedly said they could not recall whether they attended a late January 2011 secret meeting with Mayor Michael Pavia.

City Rep. Mary Fedeli, R-17, said she remembered attending a Legislative and Rules Committee meeting on Jan. 24, 2011, but couldn't recall an earlier meeting with Pavia and the seven other Board of Representatives leaders to discuss "intergovernmental relations."

"I don't recall," Fedeli said.

City Rep. Harry Day, R-13, said while he was not part of the 40-member board's leadership in January 2011, he had at times participated in discussions with them.

"I was not officially part of the leadership at that point though I did occasionally attend meetings with the Board of Reps," Day said.

After the FOI hearing on a complaint by former Board of Finance Chairman Joe Tarzia was continued last month, the city on Friday brought Day and Fedeli to offer testimony in an effort to quash the complaint.

Tarzia contends the eight Board of Representatives leaders have improperly gathered, sometimes with the mayor, before monthly meetings of the board's Steering Committee, which determines the items that make it to the agenda before all 40 city representatives. All eight leaders hold voting seats on the 18 member Steering Committee.

Last month, the case's hearing officer, Kathleen Ross, blocked Tarzia's attempt to add dozens of other meetings, stretching back to early 2010, and accompanying email correspondence showing leaders met to discuss committee appointments, the fire department, and other substantial issues.

During the hearing, Ross repeatedly questioned Tarzia if he knew they met as a committee during his tenure with the Board of Finance and why he didn't consider it suspect.

"Why didn't you file an FOI complaint then?" Ross asked.

Tarzia said he had a general awareness that the Republican and Democratic leadership met, but assumed they were a formal committee, not a group of legislators meeting in a committee-like fashion without public notice or keeping minutes.

"I thought they operated under the rules of the Board of Representatives," Tarzia said.

A video of the Legislative and Rules Committee from Jan. 24, 2011, available on the city's website shows City Rep. Eileen Heaphy, D-8, one of the eight board leaders and chair of the committee, refer to a "leadership meeting" with Pavia that night.

"We were upstairs in a leadership meeting with the mayor," Heaphy said on the tape. "It was quite interesting, but I had to force myself to leave."

Tarzia's attorney, Joseph Sargent, said the tape was incontrovertible proof of the closed-door meetings, despite a lack of corroborating agendas, minutes, and notice, as well as Fedeli's inability to recall if it took place or if she attended. "It's very common and effective to be able to bob and weave and say you don't recall," Sargent said. "But it is very rare to have a videotape that shows that something did occur."

Sargent on Friday urged Ross to reject arguments by City Attorney Michael Toma that an email from Pavia's office seeking the Jan. 24 meeting before the Steering Committee along with a Microsoft Outlook scheduling reminder to Pavia's cabinet members about the meeting with the "leadership of the BOR," was not strong proof the group illegally discussed city business away from the larger board.

"It's incredible that the city will come here and say that an invitation the mayor sent to the leadership and also emailed his cabinet is not proof," Sargent said. "The testimony of Mrs. Fedeli is not that she didn't attend it is that she didn't recall."

Toma told Ross he believed the lack of follow up email confirming the proposed meeting indicates it might not have happened.

Sargent said he obtained subpoenas requiring Pavia and City Rep. Gabe DeLuca, R-14, who would have participated in the meeting, to attend Friday's hearing, but neither did.

Sargent declined an offer by Toma to reach Pavia by phone and said he would press an effort in state Superior Court to force Pavia and DeLuca to offer testimony under oath about the secret meetings.

"I definitely want to question the mayor under oath given the existence of the tape," Sargent said.

Ross said toward the end of the hearing that she was still considering whether Tarzia's complaint could possibly be invalidated because a lack of jurisdiction of the FOI Commission, a technical disqualification that could turn on whether the complaint was filed too long after the January 2011 meeting to be valid.